#autismproblems

[chavisory]

It's hitting me that autistic people, and especially when we're kids... get a whole lot of information and feedback about how to tell when our social interaction isn't wanted... and not a lot about how to tell when it is.

And that's coming back to bite me really hard right now.

[dandylovesturtles]

uh just a little something because I was thinking of something earlier and idk I like quiet moments of intimacy between people

set in the bad future timeline but like nobody's dying or anything, it's just #autismproblems but also it's the apocalypse

cw in depth discussion of food sensitivities? ig?

~~~

Leo knocks on the lab door before giving his code to the voice lock, just to give Donnie a little warning before he comes in. He's holding a small plate, utensils, and two bowls of stew, which don't smell particularly appetizing, but they have to do what they can with limited rations, these days.

Donnie is hunched over his work table, battleshell off which means he's taken April's suggestion/threat to get a few hours of shell time every day to heart. He's wearing his ragged and dirty hoodie, the one he refuses to part with no matter how many holes it gets, because both the color and fabric are "perfect".

He looks over his shoulder as Leo walks in, then sighs and hunches a little further down. He's tense, now.

"That time, huh?"

"Yep." He sets the bowl down on the desk, along with his spoon. "My suggestion is don't ask what's in it."

"I stopped asking after we lost the greenhouse." Donnie keeps his attention on his work. "Leave it there; I'll eat it when I'm done with this."

"Aww, come on." Leo grabs the extra chair and wheels it over, collapsing into it. "You don't want to eat dinner with your favorite twin?"

Donnie raises his goggles so the look he gives in response is more effective. "Did Mikey send you to babysit me?"

"Whaaat? Pfft. No."

Technically it's not a lie - April sent him.

"Uh-huh," says Donnie like he absolutely doesn't buy that. He's still not reaching for the bowl.

"...Dee," says Leo, his voice going softer. He nods at the bowl. "You gotta eat."

They've all noticed how he's been losing weight - and all of them have lost weight, that's not exclusively a Donnie problem, but Donnie's weight loss has been far more apparent. None of them are getting enough to eat, but Donnie isn't eating enough.

And Leo knows why. The food they're eating now isn't exactly a taste or sensory delight even for him, and he's been known to eat just about any garbage put in front of him. He can only imagine how it is for Donnie.

But he has to eat. He can't just stop.

Donnie mumbles something under his breath, but then he swivels his chair away from the table. He motions to a more clean surface across the room. "Let's at least go over there, if you insist on watching me."

"Let's move over there for our casual family dinner," agrees Leo, and he can't help but grin at the eye roll he gets in response.

They move, and Leo passes the plate and fork and knife off to Donnie. Then he stops staring at his brother for a bit and starts eating his own stew; set a good example. The meat in it is not very good - fatty and chewy, with some gristly bits - but it's protein, and Leo will take what he can get.

When he's almost halfway through his bowl, he looks back and sees Donnie has only managed to suck down some of the broth and not a lot else.

"You can't just eat the broth," he says, and Donnie grimaces.

"I know that. I know this is all we have and that if I want to stay functioning I have to eat it." Donnie hisses an annoyed breath through his teeth. "But if logically knowing things solved the problem you wouldn't be in here babysitting me."

"I'm not babysitting you. Think of me like... your eating hypeman." When Donnie raises an eyebrow at him, he grins and pumps his fist. "Go go Tello go!"

"Annoyed huff, you are the worst," Donnie grouses, but the tension in his shoulders loosens up, just a little. He dips the spoon in and ladles out a smaller piece of the meat, screwing up his face when he looks at it. But he puts it in his mouth.

Just eating that little bit seems like it takes a massive amount of work. Donnie chews for a long time, squeezing his eyes shut and fanning one hand like he's trying to cool himself down. Then he swallows, finally, and it looks like it physically pains him.

But he ate it and didn't cough it back out and that's a win in Leo's book.

He bites back any comments like "That wasn't so bad, was it?" because he knows from the look on Donnie's face it was absolutely terrible. Instead he just asks, "Think you can do a few more?"

"No," he says immediately, and Leo sighs.

"Donnie..."

"I'm trying," Donnie snaps, and Leo quiets. "I didn't ask to be like this. Trust me, I know how inconvenient it is."

And Leo hates this, hates that his brother is talking that way, hates the state of the world is such that he has to struggle just to eat, but he has to choose his responses carefully because Donnie hates to be pitied.

"I know, bro - shit sucks," he says, and puts warmth in his voice to tell Donnie this isn't a dismissal; if he wants to complain the whole way about how much he hates this, Leo will gladly listen. "If you wanna beat up some krang hounds about it later, we can do that."

Donnie actually makes a noise that is dangerously close to a laugh. "And do what, make more stew out of them?"

"This isn't krang hound! I think..."

"You really don't know?"

"I was serious about not asking," says Leo, and Donnie's lips actually twitch up.

He fishes another piece of meat out, sets it on the plate and cuts it up into smaller chunks. Leo knows he feels self-conscious, having to do that. He's hardly the only person in the colony that has texture issues, and Leo knows no one is dumb enough to try to pick a fight with Donatello Hamato over his eating habits, but... some things Donnie feels more comfortable doing only in the presence of family.

If hiding in his lab and chopping all his food up into bite-size chunks is what it takes to get his brother to eat, though, Leo will let him do it.

Donnie takes the small chunks one at a time and swallows them whole, without chewing. His mutant biology makes it easier, and he reacts less visibly nauseous this way.

He gets through two more pieces of meat like that, Leo watching him while he eats his own. He wants to tell Donnie he's proud of him, but then Donnie will definitely feel babied and he'll throw Leo out.

So instead, Leo ladles up one of his veggies (at least, he thinks it's a veggie) and pops it in his mouth.

"Slimy, yet satisfying," he says with a smirk.

"Take your hakuna matatas and shove them up your ass," says Donnie without missing a beat.

Leo doubles over laughing, and when he looks back up Donnie is grinning and over half his bowl is gone.

[drjohndisco]

i realised this morning that i haven't ever had a crush on the female friends i had growing up simply because they weren't actually that close to me. (#autismproblems) so, that's probably why i have a preference for men (for now, anyway.)

[txchikaze]

--- Fun fact: Kensei has difficulties with social evaluation. That is, he often does not notice when he’s made a faux-pas, and he doesn’t really notice when people like him or don’t like him unless they’re explicit about it. It is a positive in that he generally doesn’t give a rat’s ass what people think about him, but it also impairs him socially, because he can be insensitive to people’s feelings towards him, and thus doesn’t adjust appropriately.

[thegreenlizard]

A pattern of experiences that started very early that inculcated that seeking adult help was not likely to actually get me effective help.

And

Something that set in more as I got older... If help isn't absolutely, consistently reliable, then I'm better off not relying on it.

And also

Winding up with negative consequences when asking adults. Bullying? I got punished. Bored at school? Teacher confiscated my more advanced reading material I brought to class. Trying to get accommodations? Getting them is more of a bother than doing without.

These of course absolutely are related to problems with communicating one’s needs, but also to problems with having one’s differing needs understood instead of interpreted as being difficult, combative, arrogant, selfish, or any number of other things.

I realized the other day that the reason I didn't watch much TV as a teenager (and why I'm only now catching up on late aughts/early teens media that I missed), is because I literally didn't understand how to use our TV. My parents got a new system, and it had three remotes with a Venn diagram of functions. If someone left the TV on an unfamiliar mode, I didn't know how to get back to where I wanted to be, so I just stopped watching TV on my own altogether.

I explained all this to my therapist, because I didn't know if this was more related to my then-unnoticed autism, or to my relationship with my parents at the time (we had issues less/unrelated to neurodivergency). She told me something interesting.

In children's autism assessments, a common test is to give them a straightforward task that they cannot reasonably perform, like opening an overtight jar. The "real" test is to see, when they realize that they cannot do it on their own, if they approach a caregiver for help. Children that do not seek help are more likely to be autistic than those that do.

This aligns with the compulsory independence I've noticed to be common in autistic adults, particularly articulated by those with lower support needs and/or who were evaluated later in life. It just genuinely does not occur to us to ask for help, to the point that we abandon many tasks that we could easily perform with minor assistance. I had assumed it was due to a shared common social trauma (ie bad experiences with asking for help in the past), but the fact that this trait is a childhood test metric hints at something deeper.

My therapist told me that the extremely pathologizing main theory is that this has something to do with theory of mind, that is doesn't occur to us that other people may have skills that we do not. I can't speak for my early childhood self, or for all autistic people, but I don't buy this. Even if I'm aware that someone else has knowledge that I do not (as with my parents understanding of our TV), asking for help still doesn't present itself as an option. Why?

My best guess, using only myself as a model, is due to the static wall of a communication barrier. I struggle a lot to make myself understood, to articulate the thing in my brain well enough that it will appear identically (or at least close enough) in somebody else's brain. I need to be actively aware of myself and my audience. I need to know the correct words, the correct sentence structure, and a close-enough tone, cadence, and body language. I need draft scripts to react to possible responses, because if I get caught too off guard, I may need several minutes to construct an appropriate response. In simple day-to-day interactions, I can get by okay. In a few very specific situations, I can excel. When given the opportunity, I can write more clearly than I am ever capable of speaking.

When I'm in a situation where I need help, I don't have many of my components of communication. I don't always know what my audience knows. I don't have sufficient vocabulary to explain what I need. I don't know what information is relevant to convey, and the order in which I should convey it. I don't often understand the degree of help I need, so I can come across inappropriately urgent or overly relaxed. I have no ability to preplan scripts because I don't even know the basic plot of the situation.

I can stumble though with one or two deficiencies, but if I'm missing too much, me and the potential helper become mutually unintelligible. I have learned the limits of what I can expect from myself, and it is conceptualized as a real and physical barrier. I am not a runner, so running a 5k tomorrow does not present itself as an option to me. In the same way, if I have subconscious knowledge that an interaction is beyond my capability, it does not present itself as an option to me. It's the minimum communication requirements that prevent me from asking for help, not anything to do with the concept of help itself.

Maybe. This is the theory of one person. I'm curious if anyone else vibes with this at all.

[chavisory]

Here's a thought.

So I was seeing a cardiologist earlier this week. And she asked about what kind of exercise I was getting and helpfully reminded me that the recommendation is to be getting 150 minutes per week of vigorous exercise, i.e., that "you can't hold a normal conversation."

But... "the ability to hold a normal conversation," for me, is different than it is for most people. It requires more concentration. It requires more physical effort. Doing some even mild-to-moderate exercise might technically leave me the breath to hold a conversation, but not the cognitive bandwidth or coordination.

Multiply this, obviously, for autistic people who have worse motor problems.

Not to even mention, I'm just so rarely exercising vigorously with another person that I barely even have a benchmark for this. Like, once in a blue moon, I'm going on a hike with a friend. But I don't have gym buddies. I don't have local friends whose schedules line up with mine to the extent we'd be able to be getting exercise together.

Do autistic people need to be communicated to differently about exercise?

[awesomlyautistic]

[chavisory]

[Image transcription: Tweet by Aaron Vincent reads “Am reading a PhD thesis and something incredible has occurred: the page numbers in the document and the PDF are the same. I saw we award the degree with no further discussion.”]

[xoaspiewriterxo]

Autistic  problems  #2

Spending nearly  all  of your  money  on  your  special  interest  and  than  being broke  till pay  day...

[yeastymuffin]

I really want to.... but the government will only support me fully in my first year of the bachelor's degree, and I'll lose public transport after my second year... whereas if i continue to my master's, I will be supported for the 2 years it should take me to get my diploma

Dilemmas dilemmas

What if i start studying Arts and Culture studies?

[chavisory]

So I'm starting a new gig out of town in a week. (Yes, already.) And cast members and guest artists have all been sent a personal info form to fill out in order to collect bios and headshots, demographic info the theater is supposed to track, emergency contact info, allergies, etc.

And it asks "Do you consider yourself a person with a disability?" (yes), and then "How would you describe your disability, and is there any way in which we can help accommodate you to ensure a smooth and comfortable working process," something like that, I'm paraphrasing.

And part of me just wants to go "...where do I even begin?"

And another part kind of wants to tell them "Honestly, considering that I had a plane ticket and a firm arrival date a full two weeks before said arrival date, you're already killing it..."

[hannahsox-studies]

Asperger's is making pancakes for breakfast and then having to take a nap bc you tired yourself out.

[chavisory]

‘I live in extremes’: A qualitative investigation of Autistic adults’ experiences of inertial rest and motion

"An alternative explanation of Autistic inertia is derived from a predictive coding account of autism (van de Cruys et al., 2013, 2014). Under predictive coding, perception is determined by both prior expectations about the world, as well as incoming sensory signals from the world (Clark, 2015; Hohwy, 2013; Rao & Ballard, 1999). Any mismatch between the expectation and sensory signal generates a prediction error. While some errors should be attended to, others are unreliable and should be ignored. For example, you might be more alert to a mismatch between what you expected your friend to say (‘hello’) and what you heard your friend say (‘yellow’) when in a quiet café (where the sensory input is more reliable), but the same mismatch might be ignored in a noisy café (where the auditory input is less reliable, and the error could be attributed to a mishearing).

However, the brains of Autistic people may treat all errors as salient (van de Cruys et al., 2013, 2014). Thus, in a volatile environment (e.g. a busy workplace or a cluttered home), an Autistic person might become overwhelmed by multiple, salient prediction errors, all competing for attention, leading to cognitive overload, and ultimately mental and physical paralysis (‘inertial rest’)."

This study is excellent (and a good read), and really feels like the beginning of some of the research into autistic inertia I'd like to see in the world.

[awesomlyautistic]

[trainergraceneedstherapy]

It's a figure of speech-don't worry, I have trouble with those too! #autismproblems/lh

💦 You wish you were good enough to save everyone, but you're not and you can't! :3

I am and I can. Just try me (don't just try me I'm trying to take it easy).

[adhdcrybaby]

You: The puzzle piece is used as a symbol for autistic people because it originates from the problematic idea that autistic people are incomplete and have a “missing piece” in their brain.

Me, an intellectual: autistic people like puzzles